SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 27, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Gild, which is bringing meritocracy to tech hiring through innovative recruiting technologies, announced today the completion of its Series A financing totaling $8 million.

The investment is the largest Series A round in the tech hiring market, and was led by Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, with participation from SAP Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, and legendary Silicon Valley investor Mark Kvamme, an original investor in LinkedIn.

By combining Big Data techniques with patent-pending technology that evaluates developers' skills, Gild has seen its user base increase by more than 900% since its launch in June 2012 and has seen similarly strong sales growth. Recruiting solutions by Gild – specifically Gild Source – are now used by over 65 enterprise companies, such as Box, Red Hat, Rackspace, Zynga and Square.

"Gild's customers told me over and over that they get unparalleled results with Gild's solutions, which help them source and land technical talent. This has me very excited to be a part of that effort," said Steve Anderson, Founder, Baseline Ventures, which has also invested in companies like Instagram, Path, and Heroku. "Of all of the companies offering tech recruiting solutions, Gild is by far the fastest growing company in both revenues and customer growth. We like how they differentiate on deep data science and meritocracy. I expect them to use this funding to invest even more heavily in ensuring the success of their customers and to make further gains in the market."

"We've been using Gild for several months and Gild has consistently given us new candidates that we now know are good, but wouldn't have found elsewhere--the 'hidden talent,' so to speak," said Kenny Mendes, Head of Recruiting at Box. "That's tremendously valuable, when so many companies are going after the same pool of candidates identified by other social recruiting tools."

Gild will use the new funding to expand the science backing its offerings, accelerate product innovation and meet rising customer demand.

"The amount of the round and the caliber of investors feels like real validation of our model and of the team we have assembled," said Sheeroy Desai, Co-Founder and CEO of Gild. "The market is telling us that hiring and recruiting are ready for what we bring to the table: how to utilize Big Data to uncover and evaluate top developer candidates based on actual skills, rather than pedigree or personal connections."

Gild is powered by proprietary technology that scours the web for information on developers, including their public code and contributions to developer forums, and then utilizes patent-pending algorithms to score the skills of the millions of developers it finds. This lets companies move past the noise in today's recruiting arenas and hire based on merit alone--finding the developer who really can do the work, regardless of location, SEO keywords or social connections.

"From the start, Gild has positioned itself as a forward thinker focused on meeting the needs of a new paradigm of recruiting practices," said Bryan Power, Director of Talent at Square. "By offering tools that allow recruiters to quickly sift through large pools of candidates--and match the specific skills and idiosyncrasies of the candidate with the hiring organization--Gild helps identify hidden talent that traditional methods might miss, building better teams at a lower cost."

HR and recruiting have been begging for innovation. That's why Gild is here. Gild exists to bring meritocracy to the professional world by providing hiring solutions that illuminate who's talented. Companies use Gild's patent-pending hiring solutions to find and engage the best candidates out there. Unlike professional networks and job boards, Gild's solutions tell companies how good different prospects are, and provide the social insights hiring teams need to engage prospects effectively. Launched in 2011, Gild is backed by Baseline Ventures, SAP Ventures, and Globespan Capital Partners and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.

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